Inside our minds lives a bad monkey. This monkey exists in the grey matter of our mind to squash our hope and happiness. This monkey’s sole mission is to kill our optimism and possibility. I call this monkey the drunken monkey. It shows up at just the right time to drop thoughts of hopelessness and failure on any positive idea.

Let us explore. Where does this drunken monkey come from? How is it that the drunken monkey has gained so much prominence over our decisions? Why do we give him or her the time of day?

I would be so bold as to suggest that we allowed other people to feed our monkey. This feeding of your drunken monkey has been going on since childhood. Our parents, grandparents, or just an adult might have squashed one of our wild brilliant ideas with a monkey snack like this, “Oh don’t do that. You might fail.” Other snacks were given like, “Stop that or No.” All these small negative words were actually crack snacks for our drunken monkey. Left untamed on allowed to eat at will our drunken monkey grew to own our thoughts and exists to smash all possibilities.

So what if you have healthy drunken monkey wandering wild in your mind? How do you deal with this drunken monkey? Start by doing these six things to extricate your drunken monkey from your mind.

1.  Put your drunken monkey on a diet. Stop listening to the naysayers of life and begin trusting your intuition and ability.

2.  Write your drunken monkey a letter indicating his rein inside your mind is over and done. There are magical powers in the words we speak and write.

3.  Feed your drunken monkey a regimen of positive affirmation. These are poison pills for a drunken monkey.

4.  Read to your drunken monkey uplifting messages, magazines, or books.

5.  Schedule your drunken monkey out of the picture. When you schedule action and follow through you are setting your drunken monkey aside.

6.  Make a deal with your drunken monkey. Tell him or her you will try something for 30, 90, 360 days. If your actions do not produce change, you agree to honor your drunken monkey’s patent saying, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.”

Choose to shut down your drunken monkey and take control of your destiny. Choose to practice the six actions above, or find your own antidote to stop your drunken monkey. You happiness and future success depend on take him or her out.